Theatre in focus

It was a moment to cherish forever — a young actor from Indore was walking across from the bathroom at Prithvi Theatre (Mumbai) to Prithvi jhopda, towel and soap in hand, when his director introduced him to Jennifer and Shashi Kapoor.

The Kapoors gave out-of-town performers the facility to stay in the cottage called ‘Prithvi Jhopda’. “I can never forget the warmth of their smile!” relates the actor, now touching 60.

There are innumerable such stories about the Kapoors who put up the iconic Prithvi Theatre (in memory of Prithviraj Kapoor) on a plot of land that the senior Kapoor had leased to set up a permanent site for theatre, after a lifetime of doing Hindustani theatre across the country.

Travelling in third-class compartments with his large troupe of actors, technicians, props, lights etc, Prithviraj Kapoor entertained audiences far and wide. However, travel costs made theatre economically unviable when cinema weaned away a large part of his audience. So, he leased the land next to Prithvi Jhopda, where he lived, and thought of continuing his passion from here. Unfortunately, he passed away before he could fulfil his dream. The year was 1972.

On November 5, 1978, Prithvi Theatre opened its doors to theatre-lovers with the play Udhvast Dharmshala performed by Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak, Madan Jain and other young actors. It was the fruition of Prithviraj Kapoor’s dream, made possible by his youngest son Shashi and his wife Jennifer.

Putting in the money he earned from cinema, Shashi bought the land his father had leased and together with his wife, built a modern, state-of-the-art theatre for exciting, contemporary theatre, with emphasis on Hindustani productions. The place soon became the Mecca of theatre lovers from across the country. Sadly, Jennifer passed away on September 7, 1984, but her family has kept her dream project going without a break, with the annual Prithvi Festival being one of the most anticipated events for theatre aficionados.

This year, too, the festival opened with the legendary Kapoor hospitality and saw the likes of Naseeruddin Shah and Makarand Deshpande experimenting with new forms of drama. We took the opportunity, one evening, to chat with Kunal Kapoor, Jennifer and Shashi’s son at the Prithvi adda.

Kunal was only 25 when his mother passed away and the mantle of keeping the show running fell upon him. For some years, he divided his time between his career in advertising and running Prithvi. Then his sister Sanjna stepped in and nurtured Prithvi, just like her mother. When she got married and moved to New Delhi, she handed the reins back to Kunal. Taking it in turns, the siblings continue to keep the legacy of Prithvi vibrantly alive. Here are some excerpts:

What does inheriting the legacy of running Prithvi mean to you?

It is a family heritage which I feel should be preserved and carried on. Like I once told a goonda, who bullied our cafeteria staff, that the place was like a temple for me, and I didn’t want him to ever put his foot here. He got the message and never came back. I am very proud of this legacy. What my parents did was phenomenal! They were not rich industrialists but they invested their hard-earned money into theatre. Other centres that came up around the same time got land from the government at a subsidised cost.

When my parents conceived this centre to promote professional theatre, they were very clear about their goals and we continue to pursue the same. Prithvi will never be let out for anything other than performing arts, unlike many auditoriums that allow corporate meetings, weddings on their premises.

Can you recall how your parents conceived building this unique centre for performing artistes?

In 1972, the year that papaji (Prithviraj Kapoor) died, the lease for the plots on which his residential cottage and the shed stood, expired. The Bajaj Trust, which owned the plots, offered them to the Kapoor family to buy. Only dad was interested and he bought them. My father was very keen to put up the theatre that papaji had wanted to build. Back then, my mother and he had several brainstorming sessions and appointed architect Ved Segal to build a theatre like the contemporary ones in the West. Segal was sent to England to study some of these.

There would be animated breakfast table discussions about the project. This was a period when my father’s career in films was on the upswing and he was also producing Junoon. Even though he was successful in the mainstream cinema, my father wanted to do meaningful cinema and promote good theatre to continue papaji’s legacy.

The concept was to encourage low-cost, non-profit theatre and to lower the risk of high costs for the players by providing a well-equipped theatre with advanced technical facilities at reasonable costs. It took some years of planning before the construction could start, but in 1978, the doors were thrown open to viewers to watch Udhvast Dharmshala. No tickets were sold. At the end of the show, a box was passed around for whatever the viewers wanted to contribute.

But now you are so particular about tickets that even the Kapoors have to buy them to watch shows...

Yes, none of us can occupy a seat without a ticket. When my brother Karan was here recently, I bought him a ticket for a play he wanted to see. When people ask me for passes, I ask them if they would ask Anand Mahindra for a free Scorpio. This is our kamai (earning).

Hindustani theatre was given prominence in the early years of Prithvi. Is it still so?
More English theatre is being produced across the country as Hindi has a limited audience, so we have to allot time proportionately. We try to strike a balance.

Organising the Prithvi Festival every year must be a mammoth task. Do you outsource it?
No, not at all. It is all in-house. This year, my daughter designed the lights and decor. My son does the video shoots and edits. Our meal-time conversations revolve around Prithvi and cinema. We also have a great team that works together for the pure love of theatre.

Apart from the November festival, you have other cultural events too...

Yes, we have the Symphony Of India concert on the second Monday of every month, the Urdu Mehfil every second Tuesday of the month, the Udayaswar (morning ragas starting at seven in the morning) every third Sunday, the Memorial Concert in February, and the Summertime Workshops for children. Our calendar is really quite full. Skeptics who thought Prithvi would close down after our mother’s demise proved to be wrong. The show continued on the day she passed away, and it will always do so.